CHAP. tournament held in London in Rogation XXIII. week, (one of the principal festivals of the 1359. Roman Catholic church,) was intended to

celebrate the happy restoration of general amity. The court of England therefore was proportionably exasperated at being again plunged into all the hazards of war. Edward immediately prepared for the renewal of hostilities, and entered upon his expedition in the close of the year with a more powerful armament than before or since that time ever passed the sea from the island of Great Britain. He sailed from Sandwich in Kent on the twenty-eighth of October, with a thousand ships and one hundred thousand men f. He had with him his four eldest sons, and most of the principal nobility of the kingdom. He had summoned originally all the males in his realm, from the age of twenty to threescore, with certain excep

tions; and he took with him the flower of CHA P.

this immense multitude.

Chaucer was in this expedition. For this we have his own authority. On the twelfth of October 1386, he was examined as a witness, in a cause of arms, depending in the court-military, between sir Richard le Scrope and sir Robert Grosvenor, and in the beginning of his deposition states that he had already "borne arms twenty-seven years." This phrase is equivocal; and it was suggested to me by a person, curious in antiquarian researches, that it probably referred to the period at which he received a grant of arms from the sovereign. The conjecture was further confirmed, by the circumstance of the same word [armeez] being clearly -used, in the next line of the deposition, to express a shield of arms. This interpretation however is unanswerably refuted, by a comparison of the deposition of Chaucer with the depositions of the other witnesses

XXIII.

1359. Chaucer engaged in the expedition.

Barnes, ubi supra

VOL. II.

Appendix, No, I,

P

XXIII.

1359.

Se

CHAP in the same cause. They almost all state, just as he does, the period at which they be"bear arms." Many of these are gan to persons of ancient and noble family, whose shield of arms descended to them by inheritance, and who therefore cannot refer to a period when, by grant of the sovereign, they were first entitled to such a distinction. veral of them date from some known military epoch, such as the "battle of Poitiers," the "battle of Spain," and the "sea-fight of the Spaniards;" plainly demonstrating that the period they assign to their " bearing arms, was that at which they first drew their swords for the assault of an enemy. The phrase therefore being thus illustrated by the result of comparison, gives us, under Chaucer's own testimony, the date of his first appearing in arms against what were called the enemies of his country, viz. the autumn of the year 1359. The fact which he asserts himself to have witnessed in his military capacity, he states to have occurred in France; and there was no military expedition from England against that country, for three years

XXIII.

before, or for ten years after, this period. CHA P. This reduces the date of Chaucer's appearance in the field almost to a demonstration.

Chaucer was not led to the scene of battle, as Paulus Jovius was by Charles V, or Boileau and Racine by Louis XIV, that hẹ might be the better qualified to be the historian or poet of the scene. If that had been the case, we may believe that we should possess some composition of his upon the subject of the military accomplishments of Edward III. He went on the expedition as the friend and confident of the young earl of Richmond. He went that by such a proceeding he might acquire a clearer and more honourable name among the courtiers of his master. Military achievements were the passion of the age; and a man, whose destiny, like Chaucer's, led him to associate with soldiers and princes, could scarcely avoid making his appearance in arms, and trying the fortune of the field.

1359.

Rheims

The first object toward which the English Siege of monarch bent his march was the city of Rheims, where it had been customary for the

CHAP. kings of France to be crowned, and where

XXIII. he purposed to commence hostilities by a

1359.

English sit

down be

solemn inauguration in character of sovereign of the country to the dominion of which he pretended. Upward of seven weeks he sat before the place', but his proceedings were in the nature of a blockade, and he did not attempt to take it by storm. During this period several excursions were made by the assailant army, and in one of the most successful of them, in which several fortified places were taken, and among them St. Menehoud, the name of the earl of Richmond appears as the second person of distinction engaged in the expedition, his father-in-law the duke of Lancaster having the principal command.

Edward appears to have expected to gain fore Paris. the city of Rheims by persuasions or threats; but, being disappointed in both, he at length